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On the front page of today's New York Times is the story of a retired lawyer, Thomas A. Cox , 66, of Denmark, Maine, who formerly worked for a bank calling in loans and foreclosing on people and found his encore career when he went over to the other side.

The work took a toll on his marriage. After it ended, he became depressed. He stopped practicing law and built houses for a while, then he began volunteering at Pine Tree Legal Assistance, a nonprofit helps fight foreclosures.

Taking on a routine foreclosure case for a client, he discovered the aggregious illegal processes of the lender, GMAC Mortgage, whose employee had signed off on the loan with the title "limited signing officer." In a deposition, the employee casually admitted that he had prepared 400 foreclosures a day without reviewing them.

Cox's digging ultimately exposed a slew of foreclosure errors and forced GMAC, the county's fourth largest mortgage lender, to halt foreclosures in 23 states. Following the revelations about GMAC other big lenders checked their own records, discovering widespread errors, to the point where there is now virtually a nationwide freeze on foreclosures by the biggest lenders.

Although Cox worked pro bono, a judge ordered GMAC to pay him $27,000 -- the amount he would have been paid if he'd been her lawyer.

Read The New York Times story by David Streitfield here.